The central area had been battered by the fight; it looked like a stretch of land several bulldozers had taken turns leveling, smoothed out to an almost clinical flatness.
Lin Shuyou searched for a long time before he finally found a fertilizer sack at the edge of the rubble.
The bottom of the sack had a hole.
Ayou grabbed it, squeezed it tight, and tied a knot.
Then Ayou carried the sack over to Little Yuan.
“Clatter, clatter…”
He emptied everything from his backpack onto the ground, then began transferring the contents into the torn fertilizer bag.
After that he started carefully placing the broken porcelain shards, one by one, back into his backpack.
Just thinking about those shards—how they could be fused into talisman-armor to call the two augmented generals down to labor—made a strange, fierce joy swell in Ayou’s chest.
On paper there was a hierarchy now.
The child-spirit had become a ghost general whose life and death Ayou controlled.
But Ayou had always given the child-spirit broad leeway; things weren’t much different from before, and so the child-spirit’s mood still bled into him.
The Child: “Tsk tsk, what fine material this is. What a bargain for them. I’m almost jealous.”
Lin Shuyou: “Then go on, take it.”